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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22627639">out of the blood</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhymae/pseuds/rhymae'>rhymae</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hunter X Hunter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Devotion, Eventual Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, POV Second Person, Phone Calls &amp; Telephones, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reunions, making amends &amp; growing into yourself instead of a shell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 04:41:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,800</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22627639</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhymae/pseuds/rhymae</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Look, there was a time you would have done anything for Gon, and there is a time he would have asked for it. </p>
  <p>Because that is what you do. You follow. </p>
  <p>You followed Illumi right into the trap he set for you, and then followed Gon right back out of it. </p>
  <p><cite>Whatever comes after</cite>, you'd thought, a child born for blood and made hungry for it, following sunlight even after you were blinded, <cite>would be a type of penance.</cite></p>
</blockquote><br/>Or, Killua, the animal of aftermath, and finding what it means to (re)start again.
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>67</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>out of the blood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <cite>We pull our boots on with both hands<br/>but we can’t punch ourselves awake and all I can do<br/>is stand on the curb and say Sorry<br/>about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.</cite>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> <cite>I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.</cite></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>- Richard Siken</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>"One drop on your tongue, and you won't ask for more.</em><br/>
<em>You've thought this somewhere before."</em>
</p><p> </p><p>- Fanny Howe</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>I.</strong>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Here is a rule you know, one you broke in the same lifetime you made it:</p><p> </p><p>Where there is something you want, you don’t deserve the pathway towards it.</p><p> </p><p>You don't know where the rule started from. Maybe Illumi, maybe sooner, but definitely not after. You don't know where it started, but it's what you have. </p><p> </p><p>It's what you know.</p><p> </p><p>And maybe, when you life broke into what it is, you could have chalked it all up to this. You could have walked the way you paved yourself, far from home and even farther from your family.</p><p> </p><p>It's just a rule. Sometimes one you find yourself holding to, and sometimes one you don't let yourself think too much about.</p><p> </p><p>It doesn’t have to mean anything else if you don't let it.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>II.</strong>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>You’ve killed people. </p><p> </p><p>That’s easy. That’s routine. That's a confession spelled out in teeth.</p><p> </p><p>You fall asleep knowing it and wake to the same blood coating your hands, like an ingrained lullaby. </p><p> </p><p>It’s what you know, what's to be expected from the killing child of a blood hungry family line. Too many razors in your skin.</p><p> </p><p>You hate death, and you hate your killing body. You hate the bodies’ you’ve killed. You hate the stench of sweat, the bare-bones of a fight.</p><p> </p><p>But it’s what you know. It’s your skill, your survival: your birthright. The key to protection you haven’t earned yourself the right of yet. </p><p> </p><p>It's the key to a door you didn't know you could open until one day you opened your eyes to another breathing body beside you, the same size as your own.</p><p> </p><p>You know this story like you know the gates of your house, like you know the pattern of Gon’s footsteps when you aren’t even looking for them.</p><p> </p><p>You know you are a killing body, more blood than you have ever been boy, and you also know this: Gon is reckless.</p><p> </p><p>So, to connect theory to thought, to make action into reality, you teach yourself this:</p><p> </p><p>A killing body can be worth something to the object it chooses to protect. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>III.<br/>
</strong><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Two weeks turn into a month, and then it's Gon’s voice in your ear like a constant, regardless of the constant time changes.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>A month and it feels like a year, feels like finding a new person and carving yourself a place in the wreckage.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Gon says, across the phone line and miles and miles of islands away with the ocean echoing through like a second home: “I miss you, Killua.”</p><p> </p><p><br/>
<br/>
Neither of you have anything to add to that.</p><p> </p><p><br/>
<br/>
Because of course you miss Gon. You miss Gon like the sky’s blue, or the magic of chocolate. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It’s like air, and you’ve never been the best at taking it in alone.</p><p> </p><p><br/>
<br/>
“Yeah,” you say, let the like crinkle like the sound of unwrapping chocolate robots, Alluka’s breath a radiating calm against<br/>
your shoulder. A reminder of placement, of the divisions between time. “I miss you too.”</p><p> </p><p><br/>
<br/>
Placement means little though when you can hear Gon’s smile against your ear, clear as if he was next to you himself.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>IV.</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Here is a list of things Illumi’s needle never made you do:</p><p> </p><p>Talk to Gon. Put your life on the line. Play for any cost. Save Alluka. Save Kite. Take the Hunter exam. Learn from Bisky. Meet Kurapika. Find what it means to be a friend. Meet Leorio. Learn what it means to have a friend in return.</p><p> </p><p>There’s a smaller list, of course, for the things you wish it had. But that isn’t something you like to think about. Even if you can’t stop.</p><p> </p><p>Here is what you wish Illumi’s needle had made you do, if you were strong enough, if you knew what it all meant before it tore apart:</p><p> </p><p>Leave before Gon had thought to ask.</p><p> </p><p>Because that’s the thing. The trick that kept you moving, that kept the quest something good instead of something in vain.</p><p> </p><p>Gon started it, but you were the one to end it. You were the one to give movement to meaning, to translate Gon into what he needed from you and what you wanted to be.</p><p> </p><p>You hate it, how easy you kill. In any terms. Gon and sunshine before it wrecked it body; you and whatever it was you wanted before you left it behind.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
And isn’t it funny, how the beginning reflects the end. Funny in the sort of way that feels like all the times you threw up blood across your families’ pristine floor after training and your ribs ached for days.</p><p> </p><p>It’s power and it’s poison, you think, to love someone so much you’d kill anything they asked of you- even if it’s yourself.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>V.</strong>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There was a time you would have done anything for Gon, and there is a time he would have asked for it. </p><p> </p><p>That’s what you do. You follow. </p><p> </p><p>You followed Illumi right into the trap he set for you, and then followed Gon right back out of it. </p><p> </p><p>You’ve always been too ready to throw yourself away. </p><p> </p><p>At least, that’s what Leorio told you once. Somewhere between the auction and shadow troupe. Neither of you mentioned what could have led to that, but you didn’t have to. </p><p> </p><p>Leorio said you’d never had a hand in anything that had happened to you. You disagree. </p><p> </p><p>What makes a body doesn’t get forgotten the same way you won’t let yourself forget all the people you killed to make yours. So your family enforced it, fine. They were still your hands. </p><p> </p><p>A family of hands means the same when they are all rooted back to you. There is more than one reason, of course, that you’d give all of your blood to erase the title of <em> heir </em>before your name.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>VI.</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>You don’t know why you call Leorio.</p><p> </p><p>Nostalgia, maybe. Or an insomnia fueled craze that leads you into the bathroom away from Alluka so you can teach yourself how to breathe again.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe it's the same reason you didn’t try Kuripika’s phone, because you knew you wouldn't never get an answer.</p><p> </p><p>Leorio says as much when he picks up and you're normal enough to be almost kind for the first few minutes.</p><p> </p><p>You ask him where Kuripika is these days, conversation lulling with the bathroom fan and your sister's snoring on the other side of the door.</p><p> </p><p>Leorio makes an almost snorting sound, says, “I wish I knew, kid.”</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t ask you about Gon. </p><p> </p><p>That, maybe, is what fuels it. The fact that you don't have to speak to be understood. </p><p><br/>
Leorio's saying something, and you don’t catch yourself quick enough before the anger spills over into something else, something icy and silver, so sharp that you almost don’t feel when the phone in your hands shocks you: “Why is it always us?”</p><p> </p><p>A pause. You can hear Leorio blink across the line, “Huh?”</p><p> </p><p>Casual conversation has never been your expertise. That was Gon's thing. There's no one, now, to fill in that blank for you.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
“Why,” you say, feeling like something awful will happen if you don’t just say it, don’t just spit it out and let it burn you over like ice, “are we the ones left behind?”</p><p><br/>
<br/>
Leorio goes quiet on the other line. Your thoughts fill the silence like static. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> But you were the one who left first. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>But did you really?</p><p> </p><p>It didn’t feel like it. Not when Gon’s back became a stronger memory than his face. Not when you lost everything right before your eyes in trying to keep it, too afraid to break what you had wanted for so long when you finally had it.</p><p> </p><p>When Leorio speaks, you can hear sincerity through the noise, but it stings just as bad, “Because I think someone had to do it. And I think both of us know that.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"Us."</em>
</p><p> </p><p>It's fascinating, in a sick way, how quick a word can manifest.</p><p> </p><p>You think of Bisky, of warnings and needles and how your brother’s voice is always stronger in your head than your own. </p><p> </p><p>You think of shock, what it means to endure. What it means to take someone else’s path until it becomes your own.</p><p> </p><p>Leorio says, through the static, through your thoughts like an embrace instead of a slap: “You know what I finally learned from it, Killua? What comes from being the one left behind?”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>A pause. Then, a breath when you finally remember to take it.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“You learn just what it means to stay.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>VII.</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Here is another rule you know, but that still doesn’t make it fair:</p><p> </p><p>What you want is not always what you deserve. Or, more specifically, what you’ve lost doesn’t always equal what you’re owed.</p><p> </p><p>Fair, for you, has always been relative.</p><p> </p><p>You are, against all odds, still learning that part.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>VIII.</strong>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>You don’t have to ask about Whale Island because Gon tells you everything on his own. </p><p> </p><p>Three months turn into six, turn into seven, and then it’s Alluka smiling around every city corner and you on your toes, slipping into another unlisted hotel for the night. </p><p> </p><p>You’d like to believe some things don’t change, Gon’s voice in your ear and Alluka’s head in your lap.</p><p> </p><p>But then Gon says, quiet in the way he only is when he knows the outcome reaction: “I’m thinking about going away for a little bit.”</p><p> </p><p>And for a moment, the world is compressed to the shine of an adult Gon’s face and the brightest flash of gold, your own voice screaming like an animal through it. </p><p> </p><p>You aren’t watching your words when you say: “That sounds like a warning.”</p><p> </p><p>Because it is, but you’re not supposed to voice it. Not like this, and not here. That’s for later, with your face pressed into your pillow and hidden away. </p><p> </p><p>But you know what it cost, now, to bite your tongue in the face of danger.</p><p> </p><p>Gon stays quiet.</p><p> </p><p>You swear you can hear Aunt Mito saying something in the back, and you could probably catch it if your mind wasn’t a slide show of confession, of all the ways you can see Gon’s path taking the same end. </p><p> </p><p>Gon is waiting on you to ask. </p><p> </p><p>You don’t ask. </p><p> </p><p>When you hang up, you don’t realize you have until the phone at your ear rings when Gon calls again, seconds after you've hung up on him. </p><p> </p><p>You let the phone ring, lower it onto the bedside table of your hotel for the night and watch it vibrate. Every ring feels like something you’re not ready to let go of. It feels like the last of something. </p><p> </p><p>You are tired of the lasts of things.</p><p> </p><p>Alluka silences the phone for you after three more calls, but you both watch as it lights up again and again, like some kind of symbol. Some kind of hint for what is to come. You didn't think she was still awake.</p><p> </p><p>You don’t realize you’ve zoned out until you come to with your hand combing through Alluka’s hair and her head back in your lap, curled up like a protective covering for you. As if you are the one who needs protecting. </p><p> </p><p>Alluka turns her eyes up to meet yours. </p><p> </p><p>“I'm sorry brother is sad,” she says, and doesn’t that just make it all come crashing down like the crack of a knife against your skull. </p><p> </p><p>You say, compressing your voice, your own self until you are nothing but what Alluka needs in the safety of this room: “I’m not sad. Don’t worry, brother’s got you.” As if you aren’t already the monster under every fearful child’s bed. </p><p> </p><p>Neither of you touch the vibration of your phone for the rest of the night, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t feel it echoing in your bones.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>VIIII.</b>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>If there was a list for all the things you would have done for Gon, you wonder how many items would be things Gon never asked of you. </p><p> </p><p>You have always been too quick to give yourself for him, and it has to go somewhere, you guess. Even if you can’t see it directly spelled out.</p><p> </p><p>There isn't much you wouldn’t put on the list. That’s the problem, really. That’s the terrifying part.</p><p> </p><p>That’s not something you let yourself think about.</p><p> </p><p>It’s power; it’s poison. It’s the quiet thing inside of you that you know has painted your insides to ash. </p><p> </p><p>If that didn’t do it, you are sure you’ve done it to yourself by now.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>X.</b>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>Grief.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
You know a thing or two about grief. How to wrap it into something else. How to make it a weapon, how to make it burn.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
What makes it, what can lead up into it, and what can be done to prevent it. You can’t stop it, though. You learned that from Illumi, one of the lessons that come back after the needle leaves.</p><p> </p><p><br/>
You know that no one can stop grief.</p><p> </p><p><br/>
You also know that your hands are bloody with it.</p><p> </p><p><br/>
<br/>
So, you know about it. You’ve more than played your fair part in creating it so much as maintaining it.</p><p> </p><p><br/>
<br/>
Which is why it doesn’t make sense that when Gon told you, angrier than you’d ever seen him, cold in a way that made you wish the pain was yours instead of his: “This must mean nothing to you, Killua. Considering it doesn’t concern you.”</p><p> </p><p><br/>
<br/>
That you stopped working.</p><p> </p><p><br/>
You will know later, years down the road, with Alluka’s hand in yours and the world at your fingertips in a way that it hasn’t ever been before, that a part of you died in that moment. You aren't a stranger to death by any means, but you try to keep your distance.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
There was a Killua before Gon tried to kill himself just to take you down with him, and there was a Killua who manifested from the flames of grief after.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
You still won’t know which one was the real you. Or whose grief you rose up out of. Or, even, which one you liked better.</p><p> </p><p>But you will know this, because you are learning it now, your back to the world tree and Gon slipping from your grasp in a way that suffocates you exclusively:</p><p><br/>
<br/>
There was a Killua before Gon, and there was a Killua after.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
You have survived worse, but it still won’t feel like it because you know that Gon was ready to leave. </p><p> </p><p>You were just to one to give that want a voice.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>XI.</b>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Here’s a secret that’s not so secret. That keeps you up at night; that brings your sister closer to your chest when it does:</p><p> </p><p>You were ready to die with Gon. For Gon. </p><p> </p><p>And you wonder if he ever figured that part out, how prepared you were to die by his side. </p><p> </p><p>God, what Illumi would have given to carve himself into that shape, if it meant getting to keep you. You don't let yourself laugh about it, because you don't think it would end there.</p><p> </p><p>The reasoning didn’t have to be strong, and it wasn’t. At least, not enough to cost Gon’s life. </p><p> </p><p>Your life itself has been built up from all the bodies you’ve torn to pieces. </p><p> </p><p>For Gon, it would have been more than a devastating waste. For you, the child born for blood and made hungry for it, it would have been a type of penance.</p><p> </p><p>An apology, maybe, for all the things you couldn’t stop yourself. For all the pain you couldn’t keep Gon from, no matter how hard you tried.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
There’s something inside of you that’s wrong. Some faulty disconnect or too much of a lack.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
Again, what did you expect from it? A bond with the one person who ever risked anything for you. </p><p> </p><p>One act, and you’d never had anyone be kind to before. It was as forgein a thing as Gon himself. </p><p> </p><p>It’s almost like a perfect lead it: Gon’s presence and how everything after was blood you spilled to keep it and nothing else. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>XII.</b>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Gon doesn’t have to come back for you to live.</p><p> </p><p>You’re learning that, now. Alluka looking over your shoulder and a new bright smile to pave your path around. </p><p> </p><p>You don’t touch your phone for a week. You only bought it for Gon anyway- matching cases and shipping one to Whale Island with nothing but your own number on the letter and the memory of laughter over heartache when you got the first call.</p><p> </p><p>It would be sad how fast you break if you weren’t already aware of it. Illumi taught you that every flaw was a weakness, but you’ve never needed anything more than Gon and Alluka to prove him wrong.</p><p> </p><p>Alluka hands you your phone and charger on day six, a serious look in her eyes and something else you can’t place that makes your throat tighten.</p><p> </p><p>Alluka says: “Nanika gets sad when brother is sad.” Like she isn’t breaking your heart from the sentiment alone. </p><p> </p><p>But then Alluka takes your face in-between her hands and nods like she’s seen something she likes.</p><p> </p><p>“You should call,” Alluka says, and neither of you have to say exactly who.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>XIII.</b>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>You’ve never had a hand in creation like you do dissection. Call it destruction or even desecration, but it's still the same sentiment. That’s fine.</p><p> </p><p>Or, well, it isn’t, but it’s worth it, maybe. Another form of training that lead you into the person you are now: the person you thought could be strong enough to protect Gon.</p><p> </p><p>Of course, you didn’t account for self-destruction.</p><p> </p><p>You should have seen it. Seen it the same way you know how to track an enemy close enough to trap their heart between your own shoulders, how to stop a thing from happening before anyone else has even imagined it.</p><p> </p><p>You didn’t. Not that time. Payment followed, like it always does, in the form of the event that nearly tricked you into burning your own skin. </p><p> </p><p>You call it that even if the term still doesn’t fit right, because Alluka looked <em> angry </em> for the first time since you saved her- and that’s what you did, right? <em> Saved </em>her? Or is that a trick too, another piece of the puzzle you’re too cloudy to see clearly? </p><p> </p><p>Alluka watched you cry while trying to name it for what it was: a failure, a defect, the loss before the break you tried to mend with your own misshapen teeth.</p><p> </p><p>Gon didn’t need you anymore, and that was the price. </p><p> </p><p>Gon didn’t need you anymore, but Alluka did. That’s good; that’s better. </p><p> </p><p>Purposeful and more than a lifetime of debt you owe to the baby sister you left alone in your family’s rotting basement, Illumi’s needle in your head to keep you focused like horror story.</p><p> </p><p>But, after it all, you know this: Alluka needs you.</p><p> </p><p>It’s a more than worth it exchange to hold you sister’s hand in yours, trying to rebuild her childhood brick by blood stained brick. It’s more than you ever thought you could ever get, even more than the boy made of sun who pulled the fire inside himself just to let it burn out.</p><p> </p><p>It’s fine. It’s more than fine.</p><p> </p><p>Gon calls, and you talk. You don’t ever ask him why. </p><p> </p><p>You don’t cross the line held in place by Ging and Pituo, the golden balance surrounding not only Kite himself, but what he came to mean in each of your eyes. </p><p> </p><p>You’re starting to realize that may be the problem.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><b>XIV</b>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Here’s another trick, a bent rule torn up out of shame instead of guidance. Maybe the thing that partly ruined you, and maybe the thing that came back to save it all:</p><p> </p><p>You didn’t think Gon needed to know how it felt to be left, not again.</p><p> </p><p>You would never subject him to that. You would have thrown yourself into this situation a thousand times over before you shared that suffering, and then you did. So you made the choice yourself.</p><p> </p><p>You cut the tie; you threaded the needle and left before it could trace you back.</p><p> </p><p>But here’s the final twist, the one you’re still learning to accept. From Alluka, from Leorio, from hints of Gon's:</p><p><br/>
<br/>
Gon never needed you to be his martyr.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>XV.</b>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The metal feels heavier in your hands than you remember, but Alluka doesn’t let you back down. </p><p> </p><p>Not after she charged it for you, spending the whole day with you, television, and chocolate robots. This would be something that normal kids get often, kids who weren’t either of you, but you have more than enough time to make up for that now.</p><p> </p><p>The phone rings for two beats and the television goes on mute.</p><p> </p><p>You count it like a lifeline, like restraint, shaping oddly close to something burning like hope.</p><p> </p><p>Alluka smiles at you from across the hotel room, legs kicking off the bed and offering a shy thumbs up like she isn’t sure if she’d making it right.</p><p> </p><p><em>Oh</em>, you think, <em>we have so much to show her.</em></p><p> </p><p>Owing is something to fill the silence until the line clicks.</p><p> </p><p>One more beat, and then:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “...Killua?” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Gon? Hello? Hey, I-” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Killua? Are you there? I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry, okay? I-” </em></p><p> </p><p>“<em>Gon, look, I’m sorry I didn’t call. I wanted-” </em></p><p> </p><p>And it’s a mess.</p><p> </p><p>So, so much more of a mess than you’ve had in months, no, a year, and you can’t focus on anything else besides Gon’s laugh when you finally tell him to <em> shut the fuck up, I’m trying to talk, you idiot! </em></p><p> </p><p>Gon says, quiet, childlike hopeful in the way you’re both too old to cling to now: “I miss you, Killua. And- I, well, I think I owe you more than a lifetime of apologies. I, um. What I said last time didn't come out right. I meant, well, that- I would really like to see you.”</p><p><br/>
<br/>
And your heart shatters across the line.</p><p> </p><p>You think of fights, of blood and too much sacrifice for two kids who didn’t know any better. </p><p> </p><p>You think of leaving, of what it means to be left as a part in place of a newfound whole.</p><p> </p><p>But you also think of candy, of arenas and holding your best friend’s hand when he smiled like the warmest light you’d ever seen. Of saving your baby sister and taking her to meet your best friend.</p><p> </p><p>You think of home, of what it means to <em> stay</em>.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” you say, and catch yourself smiling at the way Gon’s breath hitches, at possibilities, at the image of a scarred hand holding the hand not wrapped around your sister's.</p><p> </p><p>“I think I would really like that too.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <cite>"I think here I will leave you. It has come to<br/>seem there is no perfect ending. Indeed, there<br/>are infinite endings. Or, perhaps, once one<br/>begins, there are only endings."<cite></cite></cite>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <cite><br/><cite>      - Louise Gluck</cite><br/></cite></p><p> </p><p>  <cite><br/><br/></cite></p><p> </p><p>  <cite><br/><cite>I own nothing; I hope you enjoyed! This took two months past when I first started because I am predictable. So I channeled it all into this because, well, Killua's entire arc was brilliant &amp; trauma fueled &amp; I wanted a resolution aimed follow-up.</cite><br/></cite></p><p> </p><p>  <cite><br/><cite>Comments &amp; kudos make me soo happy! Thank you so much for reading. I am @rhymaes on tumblr if you want to see me post about poetry, hxh, &amp; the untamed.</cite></cite><br/></p></blockquote></div></div>
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